Resources How To

Go to:

Journal List Front Psychol v.5; 2014 PMC3927080

Front Psychol. 2014; 5: 106.Published online Feb 18, 2014. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00106

PMCID: PMC3927080

Veridical mapping in savant abilities, absolute pitch, and synesthesia:an autism case studyLucie Bouvet, Sophie Donnadieu, Sylviane Valdois, Chantal Caron, Michelle Dawson, andLaurent Mottron

Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►

Abstract

An enhanced role and autonomy of perception are prominent in autism. Furthermore,savant abilities, absolute pitch, and synesthesia are all more commonly found in autisticindividuals than in the typical population. The mechanism of veridical mapping has beenproposed to account for how enhanced perception in autism leads to the high prevalence ofthese three phenomena and their structural similarity. Veridical mapping entails functionalrededication of perceptual brain regions to higher order cognitive operations, allowing theenhanced detection and memorization of isomorphisms between perceptual and non-perceptual structures across multiple scales. In this paper, we present FC, an autisticindividual who possesses several savant abilities in addition to both absolute pitch andsynesthesia-like associations. The co-occurrence in FC of abilities, some of them rare, whichshare the same structure, as well as FC’s own accounts of their development, togethersuggest the importance of veridical mapping in the atypical range and nature of abilities

Formats:Article | PubReader | ePub (beta) | PDF (663K)

Sign in to NCBI

1,2,* 1,3 1,4 5 55

LinksPubMed

Recent ActivityClearTurn Off

See more...

Veridical mapping in savant abilities, absolute pitch,and synesthesia: an autis... PMC

SearchSearch

Limits Advanced Journal listUS National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

PMC

Help

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Go to:

displayed by autistic people.

Keywords: autism, synesthesia, savant abilities, cognition, veridical mapping

INTRODUCTION

Savant abilities involve a marked contrast within the same individual, in whom apparentintellectual or developmental disabilities co-exist with strong, sometimes outstanding,specific talents. The prevalence of savant or exceptional abilities in autism is understudiedand likely has been underestimated, with popularly reported figures such as 1 in 200(Hermelin, 2001) falling well short of current findings [approximately 1 in 3; (Howlin et al.,2009)]. To date the savant literature has concentrated on abilities in a few general areasthought to be characteristic, for example drawing (Mottron and Belleville, 1993; Wallace etal., 2009), musical skills (Sloboda et al., 1985; Young and Nettelbeck, 1995; Heaton et al.,2008), and calendrical calculation or other types of memory (Mottron et al., 2006b; Thiouxet al., 2006; Neumann et al., 2010), as well as hyperlexia (Nation, 1999; Newman et al.,2007). However, it should be noted that many other savant abilities or entire areas of savantability may exist but are yet to be adequately studied (e.g., estimation; Soulières et al., 2010).Given the high occurrence of savant ability in autism, and reciprocally the high prevalenceof autism or autistic traits among savants (Heaton and Wallace, 2004), the emergence ofsavant abilities is linked with some specificity to the autistic mind and brain.

Using the weak central coherence theory framework (Happé and Frith, 2006), Happé andVital (2009) proposed that an autistic processing bias toward local information maypredispose these people to talent. Based on parental report only, they observed that itemsconsidered related to a detail-focused cognitive style were more pronounced amongchildren with “special abilities” than among those without. However, this cannot explain theacquisition of savant abilities in autism, and the concept of local bias itself is ill-defined andintrinsically multi-level. Baron-Cohen et al. (2009) proposed that local bias or detail-focusassociated with another concept, hyper-systemizing, might account for the predisposition ofautistic people to talent. Systemizing is defined as “the drive to analyze or constructsystems”; systems in turn are sets of information following rigid, predictable “if p, then q”rules. For instance, systemizing can account for superior performances in some folk physicstests (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001; Binnie and Williams, 2003). However, while rules maygovern common areas of savant abilities, such as 3-D drawing, music, calculation, and thedecoding of written language, these areas may also be characterized by irregularities andunpredictability, as in English orthography or musical improvisation.

1

See more ...

Savant skills in autism: psychometric approachesand parental reports.[Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009]

A study of perceptual analysis in a high-level autisticsubject with exceptional graphic abilities.[Brain Cogn. 1993]

A case study of a multiply talented savant with anautism spectrum disorder: neuropsychological[Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009]

The abilities of a musical savant and his family.[J Autism Dev Disord. 1995]

Research note: exceptional absolute pitch perceptionfor spoken words in an able adult with autism.[Neuropsychologia. 2008]

Non-algorithmic access to calendar information in acalendar calculator with autism.[J Autism Dev Disord. 2006]

The day of the week when you were born in 700 ms:calendar computation in an Autistic savant.[J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2006]

Review The weak coherence account: detail-focusedcognitive style in autism spectrum disorders.[J Autism Dev Disord. 2006]

Review What aspects of autism predispose totalent? [Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009]

Review Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity.[Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009]

Intuitive psychology and physics among children withautism and typically developing children.[Autism. 2003]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

The enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF) model (Mottron et al., 2006a) providesanother trend of thought, in which an enhanced role and autonomy of perception may beprominent in what is specific to the autistic mind, and particularly, in the acquisition ofsavant abilities. Existing evidence for superior perceptual processes in autism comesprimarily from results of visual and auditory tasks (for reviews, see Simmons et al., 2009;O’Connor, 2012), including those which are not performed perceptually by typicalparticipants (i.e., working memory task, Koshino et al., 2005) and/or are considered “high-level” (i.e., matrix reasoning Soulières et al., 2009). Enhanced perception and manipulationof specific materials might predispose autistic individuals to develop savant abilities, giventhe opportunity, as in 3-D drawing or musical improvisation. However, as with proposalsbased on detailed-focused cognitive styles and/or hyper-systemizing, there is insufficientevidence as to how enhanced perception leads to the development of savant abilities(Dawson et al., 2008).

To address this shortcoming, the EPF model has recently been extended via a proposedveridical mapping (VM) mechanism, which represents an attempt to address how and whysavant and other related unusual abilities develop in autism (Mottron et al., 2009; Mottronet al., 2013). VM is a capacity to detect regularities within and across isomorphic structures(i.e., structures sharing perceptual or structural similarity), at multiple scales. The materialsinvolved in savant abilities are often structured human codes (e.g., written, arithmetical,and musical structures) which are also multi-level and redundant (i.e., sentences composedof words composed of letters, songs composed of melodies composed of notes, yearscomposed of months composed of days). These materials exist across multiple scales, fromvery low-level or simple to very high-level or complex, and can be seen as highly isomorphic.

Veridical mapping in autism may arise from the combined effect of enhanced low-levelperceptual abilities and superior mid-level ability in manipulating complex patterns. As amechanism, VM would allow autistics to flexibly detect complex repetitive occurrenceswithin human codes, while operating a parallel mapping of their constituents with otherstructures sharing some perceptual or structural similarity. It allows the memorization ofthe coupling between homologous elements of these structures, as in grapheme-phonemecoupling evident in hyperlexia. A basic example of VM in autism can be found in theautobiographical account of GT, a 9-year-old autistic boy, who could make outstandingweight, height, and distance estimations. GT reported that he used the recurrent mappingof a weight of a cereal bar of 35 g to estimate weights under 10 kg, which was confirmed by

Review Enhanced perceptual functioning in autism:an update, and eight principles of autistic perception.[J Autism Dev Disord. 2006]

Review Vision in autism spectrum disorders.[Vision Res. 2009]

Auditory processing in autism spectrum disorder: areview. [Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012]

Functional connectivity in an fMRI working memorytask in high-functioning autism. [Neuroimage. 2005]

Enhanced visual processing contributes to matrixreasoning in autism. [Hum Brain Mapp. 2009]

Review Enhanced perception in savant syndrome:patterns, structure and creativity.[Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009]

Review Veridical mapping in the development ofexceptional autistic abilities.[Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2013]

Superior estimation abilities in two autistic spectrumchildren. [Cogn Neuropsychol. 2010]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

his contrasting accuracy in estimation of weights superior versus inferior to this amount(Soulières et al., 2010).

We have also proposed (Mottron et al., 2013) that the same VM mechanism might alsoaccount for the plausibly superior prevalence of synesthesia (Baron-Cohen et al., 2013;Neufeld et al., 2013) and absolute pitch (DePape et al., 2012) in autism. This proposaldraws on multiple observed similarities or overlaps connecting the two abilities. Synesthesiais condition where “attribute of a stimulus (e.g., its sound, shape, or meaning) mayinevitably lead to the conscious experience of an additional attribute” (Ward, 2013, p.50).This definition has been quite useful to describe the most studied forms of synesthesia, suchas colored perception of alphabet letters or musical notes. Recently this definition has beenquestioned due to the rising number of different forms of synesthesia (61 according toCytowic et al., 2009), some of which involve more elaborate cognitive traits. For example,some people associate a specific personality with a certain number or letter (Simner andHolenstein, 2007; Smilek et al., 2007), which is called ordinal linguistic personification(OLP). Thus, Simner (2012) recently proposed a new definition: “Synaesthesia ischaracterized by the pairing of a particular triggering stimulus with a particular resultantexperience.” (p. 12).

Absolute pitch is defined as the ability to name or otherwise indicate notes without referenceto an external standard. Synesthesia and absolute pitch share some common neuralmechanism (Loui et al., 2012). The association between note and label in absolute pitchpossessors is automatic (Akiva-Kabiri and Henik, 2012; Schulze et al., 2012), as is the casewith associations in synesthesia (Ward, 2013). Genetic linkage and co segregation betweenabsolute pitch and synesthesia has also been observed (Gregersen et al., 2013). Synesthesiapossessors display characteristics neighboring those observed in autism, such as superiorperceptual capacities (Banissy et al., 2009; Goller et al., 2009) and superior mental rotationin time-space synesthetes (Simner et al., 2009; Brang et al., 2010, 2013) who also showmemory benefits that could be linked to savant abilities (Simner et al., 2009). Further, thecross modal retrieval of a concurrent element (i.e., the resultant synesthetic experience)when its inducer (i.e., the element that elicits synesthesia) is perceived in synesthesia hassimilarities with the possible role in savant abilities of redintegration, which is the non-strategic recall of a missing element in the presence of its homolog (Mottron et al., 2013).First-hand accounts document the co-occurrence of synesthesia and savant syndrome, as inthe case of Daniel Tammet (Bor et al., 2007). It has been suggested by some authors thatwhen autism and synesthesia co-occur, the probability of savant syndrome is increased

See more ...

Review Veridical mapping in the development ofexceptional autistic abilities.[Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2013]

Is synaesthesia more common in autism?[Mol Autism. 2013]

Is synesthesia more common in patients withAsperger syndrome? [Front Hum Neurosci. 2013]

Auditory processing in high-functioning adolescentswith Autism Spectrum Disorder. [PLoS One. 2012]

Review Synesthesia.[Annu Rev Psychol. 2013]

Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofsynesthesia. [J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

When "3" is a jerk and "E" is a king: personifyinginanimate objects in synesthesia.[J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

Enhanced functional networks in absolute pitch.[Neuroimage. 2012]

A unique asymmetrical stroop effect in absolute pitchpossessors. [Exp Psychol. 2012]

Auditory stroop and absolute pitch: an fMRI study.[Hum Brain Mapp. 2013]

Review Synesthesia.[Annu Rev Psychol. 2013]

Absolute pitch exhibits phenotypic and geneticoverlap with synesthesia. [Hum Mol Genet. 2013]

Enhanced sensory perception in synaesthesia.[Exp Brain Res. 2009]

Seeing sounds and hearing colors: an event-relatedpotential study of auditory-visual synesthesia.[J Cogn Neurosci. 2009]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Go to:

(Baron-Cohen et al., 2007; Simner et al., 2009). These authors proposed that an over-rehearsal related to the repetitive nature of interest in the autistic population can lead to thedevelopment of savant abilities.

In this paper we present a case study of FC, a savant autistic adult, which may cast a newlight on the nature of this link. FC is exceptional at several levels. First, he possessesmultiple perceptual and non-perceptual savant abilities, among which some (e.g., calendarcalculation) are in classical savant areas but others (e.g., absolute pitch) are marginally if atall considered to be savant abilities. Second, despite limited verbal abilities, FC is able toprovide spoken accounts of some of his methods, providing exceptional information on theway they progress with time. Third, FC also possesses some synesthesia-like associations. Wewill report a description and empirical study of FC’s abilities as well as his own accounts ofthe acquisition of these abilities.

CASE REPORT

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY

FC was born by cesarean section to a 23-year-old mother following an uncomplicated 42-week pregnancy. He weighed 2.62 kg and measured 47 cm at birth. He has one olderbrother and one younger sister who are both typically developing. His mother is theyoungest of a family of three and his father is the 9th child from a family of 10. One cousinon his father’s side presents an intellectual disability and another suffers from majorthalassemia; there was nothing relevant to report on his mother’s side. Both parents operatea restaurant, although his father is trained as an electrician.

FC’s first year of life was marked by repeated ear infections with bilateral myringotomy and,retrospectively, atypical calmness and hypo-activity. Motor milestones were unremarkable.At the age of two, his parents suspected atypical development based on absence of speech,as well as presence of swaying and excessive quietness. A 2-week stay in a neurologicalhospital revealed normal physical and auditory functions, but a suspected childhoodpsychosis, a frequent diagnosis for French autistic toddlers at the time. FC started attendinga nursery school at the age of three. By 5 years of age, FC still did not utter a single wordbut used his parents’ hands to communicate his needs, or emitted small noises. His firstword was his brother’s name and by age six, his vocabulary was only 10 words. At this age,immediate echolalia appeared and FC’s spoken language then evolved from echolalia tostandard use of speech. Between 5 and 10 years, he received regular speech therapy

See more ...

A foundation for savantism? Visuo-spatialsynaesthetes present with cognitive benefits.[Cortex. 2009]

Temporal sequences, synesthetic mappings, andcultural biases: the geography of time.[Conscious Cogn. 2010]

Enhanced mental rotation ability in time-spacesynesthesia. [Cogn Process. 2013]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

support, attended a mainstream school, and followed a specific program in an outpatientclinic for children with learning disability. FC was in this period able to read withoutapparent understanding of what he was reading, but by the age of 10 was able to read,write, and count typically. He used to cover his ears with his hands or run away when hewas confronted with unknown or loud sounds.

The diagnosis of autism was given at 11 years and 7 months by a professional clinician, onthe basis of above-threshold past and current ADI (Le Couteur et al., 1989) algorithm scoresin the four areas of social interaction, communication, restricted interests and repetitivebehaviors and age of concern. His CARS score (Schopler et al., 1980) at this age was 31,above the threshold for autism. As a teen, he was integrated in a specialized school forneurodevelopmental disorders.

FC was 21 years old at the beginning of testing and 26 years old at the time of writing. He isnow working in an establishment for disabled people, doing repetitive work. He gives briefeye contact and socially oriented smiles, but in an atypical way, and also experiences tics(hissing like a snake or looking at his watch). When he speaks, under a certain insistence,he uses stereotyped verbal expressions with some verbal apraxia. An intellectual assessmentusing WAIS-III at the age of 22.2 years (see Table 1) indicated verbal comprehension andprocessing speed index scores in the intellectual disability range (under the 2nd percentile),but normal-range perceptual organization and working memory index scores. In contrast,FC obtained a raw score of 55 (95th percentile, 1985 norms), in the range of superiorintelligence, on Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a major test of fluid intelligence which mayprovide the best estimate of autistic intelligence.

Table 1FC’s IQ profile from the WAIS-III.

During interviews, FC was able to answer questions about how he acquired his unusualabilities and the mechanisms that underlie them. We video-recorded these interviews andtranscribe here the explanations he gave us, along with ecological descriptions of behaviorsrelated to his abilities, and test results in four areas: absolute pitch, memory skills,computational ability, and synesthesia. Because FC possesses tics and has difficulty inunderstanding rapid instructions, tests were developed to evaluate the stability of thedescribed associations, using discrimination tasks. Therefore, while we provide his reaction

Autism diagnostic interview: a standardizedinvestigator-based instrument.[J Autism Dev Disord. 1989]

Toward objective classification of childhood autism:Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS).[J Autism Dev Disord. 1980]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

times (RTs) on different tests, as they may to some extent reflect how he processesinformation, they cannot be taken as unambiguous or definitive in this respect.

ABSOLUTE PITCH

Related behaviors

FC possesses absolute pitch, that is, he is able to name a note without external reference.Despite never playing the domestic organ before the age of nine, FC’s parents noticed thatat this age he was able to reproduce a song on the organ immediately after hearing it on theradio. After this age, FC displayed numerous music- and sound-related occupations andactivities. For example, he possessed a small electronic piano that he brought everywhere.He also recorded his voice and what he was playing on a portable recorder and played itrepetitively. He tried different instruments, including the guitar, flute, accordion, violin, anddrums, but the piano was his favorite instrument. FC plays both classical and modernsongs, such as Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 and the John Lennon song“Imagine.” He also composed a melody, mostly of consonant third intervals, which henamed “Repezik” and played over and over – “because that made me very pleased,” hereported. FC took a few piano lessons at the age of 10, but at the time was overtly moreinterested in the sound of the piano than in playing the instrument. FC is now taking pianolessons and is attracted by composers like Bach or Handel. According his teacher, hepossesses superior abilities to an adult amateur player, particularly his memory for andimmediate reproduction of melodies. He plays with his two hands independently but hasmore difficulty with rhythm.

Self-report

We asked FC how he knew that the note C corresponds to the C key. FC showed us thekeyboard. Starting with the C key, he explained “C is Monday, D is Tuesday, E isWednesday, F is Thursday, G is Friday, A is Saturday, and B is Sunday.” Then he added,while pointing to the right proximal C key on the keyboard “Next C is next Monday” andpointing to the next C key on the keyboard, said “next C and next Monday”. Then hepointed to the left proximal C key and explained “last Monday,” and the next left C key,indicating “Monday before.” We then asked him to which days the black keys correspond.Starting with the C key, and while pointing to each of the 12 keys composing an octave, hesaid “January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October,November, December. And everything from there (the C key) until there (the next right B

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

flat key), is a year. And from there (C) until there (the next right B flat key), these are twoyears. And from there (C key three octaves higher) until there (next B flat key), it makes fiveyears.” When we asked him whether somebody taught him or he developed this by himself,he replied, “Me, because it’s in my head.” An illustration of this association is provided inFigure 1.

FIGURE 1Representation of FC’s associations of weekdays(top) and months (bottom) with musical notes.

Test results

FC’s receptive absolute pitch was assessed through the identification of 60 musical noteswithout reference note (Vangenot, 2000). Each note lasted 1000 ms, with an ISI of 2000ms. In order to prevent the use of relative pitch, there was more than one octave betweeneach note. He orally gave the name of the note. Absolute pitch was also tested inproduction, by asking him to sing 12 notes when provided with their names. His productionwas recorded and compared to reference musical notes. Both FC’s identification andproduction were 100% correct. His capacity to identify notes embedded in chords was alsotested. There were three trials per chord of different numbers of notes, starting by three andup to six notes (12 different trials). His identification of notes within chords up to four noteswas 100% correct. For chords composed of more than 4 notes, FC did not make any falseidentifications but reported only a subsample of the notes composing the chord.

FC’s idiosyncratic note-calendar mapping was tested receptively using 14 1000 ms notesranging from B3 flat to D5 sharp, produced with Final® software, and a computer screenpresentation of days of the week and months of the year. In each trial, a day (or a month)was visually presented, together with a note presented aurally. The association could beeither congruent or incongruent per FC’s system of mapping. Days and months werevisually presented (in 24-point Arial font) in the center of the screen and remainedpresented until a response was given. Trials were interleaved with a blank screen for 2000

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

ms.

There were 168 trials in the notes-days experiment. According to FC’s mapping, half (84)were congruent and half were incongruent. In the incongruent trials, days were presentedwith a note that could be higher or lower by one tone compared to the congruent note. Forexample, Thursday, associated with the F note in FC’s mapping, was associated with the Enote and the G note in incongruent trials. Similarly, there were 192 trials in the notes-months experiment, half (96) congruent and half incongruent according to FC’s mapping.In the incongruent trials, months were presented with a note either one semitone higher orlower than the congruent note. For example, March was associated with the D note in FC’smapping and therefore in congruent trials, while March was presented with a C sharp or Dsharp note in incongruent trials. Days and months were pseudo-randomly selected in thematerial list to avoid the consecutive presentation of the same day or month. FC was askedif the sound presented corresponded to the correct day or month and responded bypressing with his right hand a green button for accurate (congruent) correspondences anda red button for the inaccurate (incongruent) correspondences. The experiment was runwith PsychoPy software (Peirce, 2007).

FC was able to correctly identify 100% of the congruent and incongruent day-noteassociations (see Table 2). His RT for congruent trials (after removing 3SD outliers, whichrepresented 4.76% of the trials) was 2.369 s (SD = 0.446). His mean RT for incongruenttrials (after removing 3SD outliers which represented 1.19 % of the trials) was 2.309 s (SD =0.475). There was no difference between congruent and incongruent conditions on meanRT (p > 0.4). In the month-note experiment, FC made 6 mistakes and was able to identifycorrectly 96.8% of trials in the congruent condition, and 96.8% of trials in the incongruentcondition. His mean RT for congruent trials (after removing errors and 3SD outliers, whichrepresented 14.58% of the trials) was 2.397 s (SD = 0.428). His mean RT for incongruenttrials (after removing errors and three SD outliers, which represented 9.37% of the trials)was 2.369 s (SD = 0.418). There was no difference between congruent and incongruentconditions on mean RT (p > 0.5). FC can therefore redintegrate the missing element inpairs of homolog elements with a speed and accuracy poorly compatible with a strategic oralgorithmic computation.

Table 2Summary of FC’s performance.

PsychoPy--Psychophysics software in Python.[J Neurosci Methods. 2007]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

CALENDAR CALCULATION

Related behaviors

FC is a calendar calculator: he can tell which day of the week corresponds to a date (day,month, year). His parents were unaware of this ability before our study, but they reportedthat FC had been interested in calendars, dates, and time since the age of six.

Self report

We asked FC how he performed calendar calculation. “I’m doing like this,” he said andthen he turned toward a piano, pointed to the keys, and said “I’m thinking with musicalnotes. C is Monday, D is Tuesday, E is Wednesday, F is Thursday, G is Friday, A is Saturday,and B is Sunday. And these seven notes are one week.” We asked him if he thinks using thesound of the note or the name of the note. He said “I think it’s like musical note, with thename of the musical note. Like this it’s easier.” It seems therefore that he uses a synestheticcorrespondence as a support for his calendrical computation ability.

Test results

In 2011, we questioned FC on the weekday of 10 past (from year 1993 to year 2011) and 10future (from year 2013 to year 2031) dates. Questions did not involve the same month morethan twice, and correct answers did not fall on the same weekday more than twice. FCmade one mistake for the past dates (90% accuracy) and one mistake (90% accuracy) forthe future dates. We also asked him 10 reversed questions for past dates (from year 1991 toyear 2009) of the type “what are the months having Monday the fifth in 2007?” There werea total of 20 correct answers possible; FC made one mistake and three omissions (80%accuracy).

COMPUTATION ABILITY

Related behaviors

FC can mentally add, subtract, and multiply numbers up to four digits quite rapidly, clearlyabove his verbal level. His parents reported that FC mastered multiplication tables at theage of seven and knew how to divide numbers at the age of eight. FC then asked for acalculator that he brought with him everywhere. At eight years old, he also showed a great

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

interest in time; he possessed a watch, and knew how to read time.

Self report

FC spontaneously explained his method of performing mental calculation. “I calculate withhours, minutes, and seconds, like this it’s easier.” He elaborated: “I did like this (for theaddition 1728 + 2932 = 4660): 48 min and 52 s plus 28 min and 28 s equal 1 h 17 min and40 s.”

Test results

Forty numbers were randomly chosen between 1200 and 14,000. The time correspondenceof these numbers was then calculated (e.g., 3520 = 58 min and 42 s). For incongruenttrials, the time correspondence was modified by ±10 min. (e.g., 3520 = 52 min and 10 s).There were 80 trials: in half (40 trials), numbers were presented with the correct timecorrespondence whereas in the other half, numbers were presented with an erroneous timecorrespondence. For each trial, one number and one time (in 24-point Arial font) werepresented in the center of a computer screen until FC gave his response by pressing with hisright hand the corresponding button “c” for the correct association and “n” for the incorrectassociation. The experiment was run with PsychoPy software (Peirce, 2007).

FC correctly identified congruent and incongruent associations in 100% of the trials (seeTable 2). His mean RT for congruent trials (after removing 3SD outliers, whichrepresented 2.56% of the trials) was 6.244 s (SD = 2.14). His mean RT for incongruent trials(after removing 3 SD outliers, which represented 4.87 % of the trials) was 6.725 s (SD =2.01). There was no difference between congruent and incongruent conditions on RT (p >0.3).

SYNESTHESIA-LIKE MANIFESTATIONS

Related behaviors

FC frequently referred to months of the year to verbalize his emotions or sensations. Hisparents reported FC saying, for instance, “it hurts like a month of March and half” or thathe is happy “like the month of June.” FC can describe his own feeling or emotion with theseassociations, and asks his parents for an interpretation of certain situations using thismonth-emotion correspondence (e.g., “like which month are you happy?”). Some numberscan also provoke in FC pleasant sensations.

PsychoPy--Psychophysics software in Python.[J Neurosci Methods. 2007]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Self report

When questioned about the month/emotion correspondence, FC explained that “January isvery very bad, February is very bad, March is bad, April is good, May is very good, and Juneis very very good.” When asked about the number/emotion correspondence, FC reportedthat some numbers can be “nice or not nice” or that they can “matter or not matter.” Inaddition, the evocation (or the vision) of certain numbers cause him a physical sensation, assometimes he reacted to certain numbers as though to a tickle, according to his parents andto our own observations. FC spontaneously provided a graphic representation of how asubset of numbers can be classified as a function of their “kindness” (nice / not nice) andtheir “mattering” (matters/does not matter; see Figure 2). Thus, four categories ofemotional valence emerge from FC’s classification. In order to establish a more systematicrepresentation of FC’s categorization of numbers, we questioned him on which emotionalvalence (i.e., category) each number is associated with. At the beginning, numbers wereasked individually and in order. After number 10, only numbers close to the categories’boundaries were asked. A representation of the architecture of FC’s categorization is givenin Table 3. FC’s synesthesia-like categories are structured by certain rules. Number of digitsin each successive category is multiplied by two (between number 3–4 there are 2 digits,between number 5–8 there are 4 digits, between number 9–16 there are 8 digits, fromnumber17–32 there are 16 digits, and so on…). Categories are presented systematically: notnice/not matter, nice/not matter, not nice/matter, nice/matter. When FC arrived at thenumber 8,388,608, he declared he wanted to stop.

FIGURE 2FC’s representation of numbers according twospecific categories: kindness (nice, or “gentil”/not nice, or “pas gentil”) and mattering (itmatters, or “grave”/it does not matter, or “pas ...

Table 3FC’s categorization of numbers.

Test results

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Go to:

Thirty-two numbers of one, two, or three digits were selected at the boundaries of FC’scategories. Numbers were pseudo-randomly selected in the material list in order to avoidthe presentation of the same number or same category twice in a row. Each number waspresented three times in association with the correct category and three times with thecategory of the closest number outside the category, for a total of 96 congruent and 96incongruent trials. For example, in the congruent condition 15 was presented with thecorrect category not nice and not matter and 17 was presented with the correct categorynice and not matter; whereas in the incongruent condition 15 was presented with thecategory nice and not matter and 17 was presented with the category not nice and notmatter. The experiment was run with PsychoPy software (Peirce, 2007). In each trial, anumber was visually presented with the written name of the congruent or an incongruentcategory. Numbers and categories were visually presented in the center of the screen andremained presented until a response was given. Number and categories were written inblack in 20-point Arial font on a white background, with a 2000 ms blank screen ISI. FCwas asked to press a green button for the correct or congruent category and a red buttonfor incongruent categories with his right hand.

FC was 97.9% accurate according to his own classification (see Table 2). His four errorswere in the incongruent condition (95.8% of correct identification). RTs were also analyzed.Errors and RTs over 3 SD were excluded from analyses (13.5% of trials). A T-test wasperformed, finding with marginal significance longer RTs for congruent (M = 2.331 s, SD =0.752) compared to incongruent (M = 2.041 s, SD = 0.471) trials, t(31) = -2.03, p = 0.051.However, as noted above, RTs might not straightforwardly reflect FC’s informationprocessing because of his tics and his difficulty in understanding rapid instructions.

DISCUSSION

This paper provides a naturalistic, empirical, and autobiographical report of a multi-talented autistic savant who is willing and able to comment on his skills. We will nowdiscuss to what extent his savant abilities are related to what is called synesthesia in non-autistic people, how this is beneficial to his performance, and how it supports the role ofVM in the acquisition of savant abilities in autism.

IS FC ACTUALLY A SYNESTHETE?

FC’s abilities can be linked to synesthesia. Indeed, FC’s number/valence attribution bearssome resemblance with OLP synesthesia (Simner and Holenstein, 2007). In OLP

PsychoPy--Psychophysics software in Python.[J Neurosci Methods. 2007]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

synesthesia, the inducer is a grapheme, generally a number or a letter, and the concurrent isa specific personality. In some cases, objects can also be associated with a specificpersonality (Smilek et al., 2007). Persons reporting OLP synesthesia have provided detaileddescriptions of the personality associated with graphemes. For example, TE, a 17-year-oldwoman, reported “Three is such a jerk! He only thinks of himself. He does not care aboutany other numbers or anything” (Smilek et al., 2007, p. 981). Despite obvious differences inverbal complexity that may be related to differences in verbal IQ, TE’s description is similarto FC’s number/valence associations.

Moreover, FC’s accounts provide evidence that the correspondence between notes and daysor months emerged after encountering a specific material during childhood. Synesthesia, aswith absolute pitch, is acknowledged to be influenced by childhood experience (Chin, 2003;Simner et al., 2005). This is well-established in the case of the influence of earlymanipulation of colored alphabets on further grapheme-color synesthesia (Witthoft andWinawer, 2006, 2013). In the case of OLP synesthesia, learning and previous childhoodexperience might also have shaped the mapping between grapheme and personality types(Simner and Holenstein, 2007; Smilek et al., 2007). Witthoft and Winawer (2013, p. 6)recently argued that synesthesia involves not only perception but also learning and memory:“associative learning and the perceptual experiences of synaesthetes are not onlycompatible, but also lie on a continuum with ordinary experience.”

Because of FC’s tics and difficulty in understanding rapid instructions, we were unable toprovide evidence for the automaticity of his associations, this being one specificcharacteristic of synesthesia (Simner and Holenstein, 2007). However, we were able toprovide evidence that FC’s associations are stable. FC’s associations could still reflect cross-modal correspondences (Spence, 2011), which share certain similarities with synesthesiaand pertain to the same continuum (Martino and Marks, 2001). One main point ofdissociation is that, unlike synesthetic associations, cross-modal correspondences are notbelieved to be idiosyncratic. FC’s associations are clearly idiosyncratic. Moreover,automaticity might not be specific to synesthesia, as it has also been observed in cross-modal correspondences (Deroy and Spence, 2013) as well as in induction of verbal noteslabels when hearing notes in some absolute pitch possessors. It should be also emphasizedthat characteristics such as automaticity have been defined in the context of synesthesiaoccurring in non-autistic people, and therefore that some kind of modification of theirnature might be expected when synesthesia occurs in an autistic context. Indeed, theextreme regularity of FC’s associations is not usually observed in synesthesia. This regularity

Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofsynesthesia. [J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

When "3" is a jerk and "E" is a king: personifyinginanimate objects in synesthesia.[J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

Non-random associations of graphemes to colours insynaesthetic and non-synaesthetic populations.[Cogn Neuropsychol. 2005]

Synesthetic colors determined by having coloredrefrigerator magnets in childhood. [Cortex. 2006]

Learning, memory, and synesthesia.[Psychol Sci. 2013]

Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofDo you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

might be the expression of FC’s autism, or just the case of an extreme synestheticmanifestation.

HOW PERCEPTION HELPS INTELLIGENCE

FC’s way of computing mental additions or multiplications may not appear to be the mosteconomical way, according to typical standards. However, FC declared that this way waseasier for him, and it results in accurate operations. This suggests that the correspondencebetween time units in base 60 up to the level of the second, as well as reciprocal transcodingbetween base 10 and base 60, is for FC effortless, fast, and stable. A similar gain throughfast, cross modal correspondences is found in synesthesia. The ability to map numbers ontoa complex combinatorial lexicon of colors and emotions, although out of reach for mostpeople, may result in exceptional memory performances. Rothen et al. (2012) report somecases of exceptional memory in which elements are remembered using variants of the “loci”method. This is the case for Daniel Tammet, an Asperger synesthete with unique learningabilities. Tammet reported that numbers up to an integer of 10,000 have unique shapes,colors, textures, and feels. A list of numbers creates the experience of a complex landscape(Tammet, 2006). The access to such a multimodal experience appears to differ from typesof memory facilitation in use in typical individuals. For instance, the chunking of verbalmaterial in memory tasks helps typical individuals, but is not beneficial to Tammet (Bor etal., 2007). Rothen et al. (2012) assumes that Tammet possesses his own internalorganization, which helps him to remember long series of digits without interference, but hecannot benefit from a strategy imposed by other minds.

That synesthesia reflects a functional combination of perception, learning, and memory isinformative on its role in the acquisition of savant abilities and synesthesia in autism. Thisperceptual mapping of elements might reflect both an autistic way to create sense from theenvironment, and a way to feel positive emotions in doing so. Another related possibilitywould be that FC’s synesthesia allows the coding and further manipulation of pattern-likeinformation naturally presented in a non-discrete form, through its mapping ontomathematical or linguistic structures composed of discrete elements. In this case,synesthesia is used as an investigational tool, top-down or bottom-up or non-hierarchical asnecessary, enhancing how an autistic person can manipulate, categorize, and make sense ofthe world. This is consistent with the enhanced role of perception in intelligence, whichrepresents one of the main messages of neuroimaging studies of autistics (Soulières et al.,2009), and extends far beyond a bottom-up, passive heuristic. It can also be manifested in

Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofsynesthesia. [J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

When "3" is a jerk and "E" is a king: personifyinginanimate objects in synesthesia.[J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofsynesthesia. [J Cogn Neurosci. 2007]

Review Crossmodal correspondences: a tutorialreview. [Atten Percept Psychophys. 2011]

Review Why we are not all synesthetes (not evenweakly so). [Psychon Bull Rev. 2013]

Review Enhanced memory ability: Insights fromsynaesthesia. [Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012]

Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesiaand Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in[Neurocase. 2007]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

situations where perceptual structures are used as a creative and investigative tool, forexample to crack the codes of emotions and less obviously structured materials.

VERIDICAL MAPPING AND SAVANT ABILITIES

This report of savant abilities in an autistic adult, FC, benefits from his capacity todocument some psychological processes associated to his performances and interests. FC’sperformance, his history, and his own intriguing accounts are consistent with the plausibleimplication of VM, across large-scale isomorphic structures and applied to variousmaterials (numbers, emotions, pitches, musical notation), in the genesis of savant abilities.VM appears to be spontaneous, non-strategic, and bidirectional (or even non-directional),for example between structures that are already represented in the person’s mind, or as away to collect, organize, understand, and to manipulate new material. Thus this mechanismmay contribute to autistic learning, creativity, and everyday information processing.

The notion of veridicality implies that multiple and sufficiently similar occurrences of astructure, across levels and scales, allows the non-hierarchical and non-strategic emergenceof a mapping between homologous elements. This is illustrated by FC’s reports on hisacquisition of absolute pitch and computation ability. He first associated the seven notes ofthe musical scale with the seven weekdays, and later on, the 12 semi-tones of the chromaticmusical scale with the 12 months of the year. While differing in their substrates, both typesof structure share the same number of elements and an ordering constraint, and therebyare highly veridical one to the other. Regarding his mental computation ability, FCcomputes arithmetical operations initially expressed in base 10 by transposing theirconstituents into base 60, performing computations in this system, then accuratelytransposing the result back into base 10. He therefore makes use of isomorphisms betweenbase 60, which structures time measurement, and base 10, which structures arithmetic. Thismapping is veridical, in the sense that the same operations can be performed in the twobases, allowing an accurate transformation of an operation expressed in one base toanother base. For these two exceptional abilities, the structural similarity is in the object(thereby, is veridical) and not in the eye of the beholder, even if the mapping may appear asan idiosyncratic selection of one structural similarity among multiple others possible.

Critically, FC seems to possess the three main types of abilities – savant syndrome, absolutepitch, and synesthesia – that all, according to our model, plausibly represent an expressionof similar or equivalent neurocognitive mechanisms. The micro-structural alterations (Kéïtaet al., 2011), enhanced or atypical connectivity (Uddin et al., 2013) involving perceptual

Enhanced visual processing contributes to matrixreasoning in autism. [Hum Brain Mapp. 2009]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Go to:

Go to:

Go to:

Go to:

areas, and cortical rededication (Samson et al., 2012) characterizing autism could plausiblysupport a VM mechanism, with various consequences – such as absolute pitch and musicaltalent, synesthesia, mental computation, calendar calculation – depending on individualvariability, availability of materials, and opportunities.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial orfinancial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We are greatly indebted to FC and his family. We also thank Rachel Zoubrinetzky for hercontribution to this study.

Footnotes

In order to reduce unhelpful biases, and in keeping with the current consensus on language in autismresearch (see Pellicano and Stears, 2011), we prefer the respectful, accurate term “autistic” rather than“person with autism” (see also Sinclair, 1999).

REFERENCES

1. Akiva-Kabiri L., Henik A. (2012). A unique asymmetrical stroop effect in absolutepitch possessors. Exp. Psychol. 59 272–278.10.1027/1618-3169/a000153 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

2. Banissy M. J., Walsh V. Y., Ward J. (2009). Enhanced sensory perception insynaesthesia. Exp. Brain Res. 196 565–571.10.1007/s00221-009-1888-0 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

3. Baron-Cohen S., Ashwin E., Ashwin C., Tavassoli T., Chakrabarti B. (2009). Talentin autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity.Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 364 1377–1383.10.1098/rstb.2008.0337[PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

4. Baron-Cohen S., Bor D., Billington J., Asher J., Wheelwright S., Ashwin C. (2007).Savant memory in a man with colour form-number synaesthesia and Aspergersyndrome. J. Conscious. Stud. 14 237–251.

5. Baron-Cohen S., Johnson D., Asher J., Wheelwright S., Fisher S., Gregersen P., etal. (2013). Is synaesthesia more common in autism? Mol. Autism 4 1–

1

Atypical lateral connectivity: a neural basis foraltered visuospatial processing in autism.[Biol Psychiatry. 2011]

Salience network-based classification and predictionof symptom severity in children with autism.[JAMA Psychiatry. 2013]

Review Enhanced visual functioning in autism: anALE meta-analysis. [Hum Brain Mapp. 2012]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

6.10.1186/2040-2392-4-40 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]6. Baron-Cohen S., Wheelwright S., Spong A., Scahill V., Lawson J. (2001). Are

intuitive physics and intuitive psychology independent? A test with children withAsperger Syndrome. J. Dev. Learn. Disord. 5 47–78.

7. Binnie L., Williams J. (2003). Intuitive psychology and physics among childrenwith autism and typically developing children. Autism 7 173–193.10.1177/1362361303007002005 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

8. Bor D., Billington J., Baron-Cohen S. (2007). Savant memory for digits in a case ofsynaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateralprefrontal cortex. Neurocase 13 311–319.10.1080/13554790701844945 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

9. Brang D., Miller L., Mcquire M., Ramachandran V. S., Coulson S. (2013).Enhanced mental rotation ability in time-space synesthesia. Cogn. Process. 14 429–434.10.1007/s10339-013-0561-5 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

10. Brang D., Teuscher U., Ramachandran V. S., Coulson S. (2010). Temporalsequences, synesthetic mappings, and cultural biases: the geography of time.Conscious. Cogn. 19 311–320.10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.003 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

11. Chin C. S. (2003). The development of absolute pitch: a theory concerning the rolesof music training at an early developmental age and individual cognitive style.Psychol. Music 31 155–171.10.1177/0305735603031002292 [Cross Ref]

12. Cytowic R. E., Eagleman D. M., Nabokov D. (2009). Wednesday is Indigo Blue:Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

13. Dawson M., Mottron L., Gernsbacher M. A. (2008). “Learning in autism,” inLearning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference. Cognitive Psychology edsByrne J. H., Roediger H., editors. (New York: Elsevier; ) 759–772.

14. DePape A.-M. R., Hall G. B. C., Tillmann B., Trainor L. J. (2012). AuditoryProcessing in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. PLoSONE 7:e44084.10.1371/journal.pone.0044084 [PMC free article] [PubMed][Cross Ref]

15. Deroy O., Spence C. (2013). Why we are not all synesthetes (not even weakly so).Psychon. Bull. Rev. 20 643–664.10.3758/s13423-013-0387-2 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

16. Goller A. I., Otten L. J., Ward J. (2009). Seeing sounds and hearing colors: anevent-related potential study of auditory-visual synesthesia. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 211869–1881.10.1162/jocn.2009.21134 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

17. Gregersen P. K., Kowalsky E., Lee A., Baron-Cohen S., Fisher S. E., Asher J. E., et

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

al. (2013). Absolute pitch exhibits phenotypic and genetic overlap with synesthesia.Hum. Mol. Genet. 22 2097–2104.10.1093/hmg/ddt059 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

18. Happé F., Frith U. (2006). The weak coherence account: detail-focused cognitivestyle in autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 36 5–25.10.1007/s10803-005-0039-0 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

19. Happé F., Vital P. (2009). What aspects of autism predispose to talent? Philos.Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 364 1369–1375.10.1098/rstb.2008.0332[PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

20. Heaton P., Davis R, Happé F. (2008). Research note: exceptional absolute pitchperception for spoken words in an able adult with autism. Neuropsychologia 462095–2098.10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.02.006 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

21. Heaton P., Wallace G. (2004). Annotation: the savant syndrome. J. Child Psychol.Psychiatry 45 899–911.10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.t01-1-00284.x [PubMed][Cross Ref]

22. Hermelin B. (2001). Bright Splinters of the Mind: A Personal Story of Researchwith Autistic Savants. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

23. Howlin P., Goode S., Hutton J., Rutter M. (2009). Savant skills in autism:psychometric approaches and parental reports. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol.Sci. 364 1359–1367.10.1098/rstb.2008.0328 [PMC free article] [PubMed][Cross Ref]

24. Kéïta L., Mottron L., Dawson M., Bertone A. (2011). Atypical lateral connectivity: aneural basis for altered visuospatial processing in autism. Biol. Psychiatry 70 806–811.10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.07.031 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

25. Koshino H., Carpenter P. A., Minshew N. J., Cherkassky V. L., Keller T. A., Just M.A. (2005). Functional connectivity in an fMRI working memory task in high-functioning autism. Neuroimage 24 810–821.10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.09.028[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

26. Le Couteur A., Rutter M., Lord C., Rios P., Robertson S., Holdgrager M., et al.(1989). Autism diagnostic interview: a standardized investigator-based instrument.J. Autism Dev. Disord. 19 363–387.10.1007/BF02212936 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

27. Loui P., Zamm A., Schlaug G. (2012). Enhanced functional networks in absolutepitch. Neuroimage 63 632–640.10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.07.030[PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

28. Martino G., Marks L. E. (2001). Synesthesia: strong and weak. Curr. Dir. Psychol.Sci. 10 61–65.10.1111/1467-8721.00116 [Cross Ref]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

29. Mottron L., Belleville S. (1993). A study of perceptual analysis in a high-levelautistic subject with exceptional graphic abilities. Brain Cogn. 23 279–309.10.1006/brcg.1993.1060 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

30. Mottron L., Bouvet L., Bonnel A., Samson F., Burack J., Dawson M., et al. (2013).Veridical mapping in the development of exceptional autistic abilities. Neurosci.Biobehav. Rev. 37 209–228.10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.11.016 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

31. Mottron L., Dawson M, Soulières I. (2009). Enhanced perception in savantsyndrome: patterns, structure and creativity. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol.Sci. 364 1385–1391.10.1098/rstb.2008.0333 [PMC free article] [PubMed][Cross Ref]

32. Mottron L., Dawson M., Soulieres I., Hubert B., Burack J. (2006a). Enhancedperceptual functioning in autism: an update, and eight principles of autisticperception. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 36 27–43.10.1007/s10803-005-0040-7[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

33. Mottron L., Lemmens K., Gagnon L., Seron X. (2006b). Non-algorithmic access tocalendar information in a calendar calculator with Autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord.36 239–247.10.1007/s10803-005-0059-9 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

34. Nation K. (1999). Reading skills in hyperlexia: a developmental perspective.Psychol. Bull. 125 338–355.10.1037/0033-2909.125.3.338 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

35. Neufeld J., Roy M., Zapf A., Sinke C., Emrich H. M., Prox-Vagedes V., et al. (2013).Is synaesthesia more common in patients with Asperger syndrome? Front.Hum.Neurosci. 7:847.10.3389/fnhum.2013.00847 [PMC free article] [PubMed][Cross Ref]

36. Neumann N., Dubischar-Krivec A. M., Braun C., Löw A., Poustka F., Bölte S., et al.(2010). The mind of the mnemonists: an MEG and neuropsychological study ofautistic memory savants. Behav. Brain Res. 215 114–121.10.1016/j.bbr.2010.07.008[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

37. Newman T., Macomber D., Naples A., Babitz T., Volkmar F., Grigorenko E. (2007).Hyperlexia in children with autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 37760–774.10.1007/s10803-006-0206-y [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

38. O’Connor K. (2012). Auditory processing in autism spectrum disorder: a review.Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36 836–854.10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.008 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

39. Peirce J. W. (2007). PsychoPy – Psychophysics software in Python. J. Neurosci.Methods 162 8–13.10.1016/j.jneumeth.2006.11.017 [PMC free article] [PubMed]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

[Cross Ref]40. Pellicano E., Stears M. (2011). Bridging autism, science and society: moving toward

an ethically informed approach to autism research. Autism Res. 4 271–282.10.1002/aur.201 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

41. Rothen N., Meier B., Ward J. (2012). Enhanced memory ability: insights fromsynaesthesia. Neurosci. Biobeh. Rev. 36 1952–1963.10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.05.004[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

42. Samson F., Mottron L., Soulières I., Zeffiro T. A. (2012). Enhanced visualfunctioning in autism: an ALE meta-analysis. Hum. Brain Mapp. 33 1553–1581.10.1002/hbm.21307 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

43. Schopler E., Reichler R. J., Devellis R. F., Daly K. (1980). Toward objectiveclassification of childhood autism: childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). J.Autism Dev. Disord. 10 91–103.10.1007/BF02408436 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

44. Schulze K., Mueller K., Koelsch S. (2012). Auditory stroop and absolute pitch: anfMRI study. Hum. Brain Mapp. 34 1579–1590.10.1002/hbm.22010 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

45. Simmons D. R., Robertson A. E., Mckay L. S., Toal E., Mcaleer P., Pollick F. E.(2009). Vision in autism spectrum disorders. Vision Res. 49 2705–2739.10.1016/j.visres.2009.08.005 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

46. Simner J. (2012). Defining synaesthesia. Br. J. Psychol. 103 1–15.10.1348/000712610X528305 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

47. Simner J., Holenstein E. (2007). Ordinal linguistic personification as a variant ofsynesthesia. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 19 694–703.10.1162/jocn.2007.19.4.694 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

48. Simner J., Mayo N., Spiller M. (2009). A foundation for savantism? Visuo-spatialsynaesthetes present with cognitive benefits. Cortex 45 1246–1260.10.1016/j.cortex.2009.07.007 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

49. Simner J., Ward J., Lanz M., Jansari A., Noonan K., Glover L., et al. (2005). Non-random associations of graphemes to colours in synaesthetic and non-synaestheticpopulations. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 22 1069–1085.10.1080/02643290500200122[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

50. Sinclair J. (1999). Why I dislike “person first” language. Available at:http://web.archive.org/web/20090210190652/http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/person_first.htm [accessed February, 2014]

51. Sloboda J. A., Hermelin B, O’Connor N. (1985). An exceptional musical memory.

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

Music Percept. 3 155–169.10.2307/40285330 [Cross Ref]52. Smilek D., Malcolmson K. A., Carriere J. S. A., Eller M., Kwan D., Reynolds M.

(2007). When “3” is a Jerk and “E” is a king: personifying inanimate objects insynesthesia. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 19 981–992.10.1162/jocn.2007.19.6.981 [PubMed][Cross Ref]

53. Soulières I., Dawson M., Samson F., Barbeau E. B., Sahyoun C. P., Strangman G.E., et al. (2009). Enhanced visual processing contributes to matrix reasoning inautism. Hum. Brain Mapp. 30 4082–4107.10.1002/hbm.20831 [PMC free article][PubMed] [Cross Ref]

54. Soulières I., Hubert B., Rouleau N., Gagnon L., Tremblay P., Seron X., et al. (2010).Superior estimation abilities in two autistic spectrum children. Cogn.Neuropsychol. 27 261–276.10.1080/02643294.2010.519228 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

55. Spence C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: a tutorial review. Attent. Percept.Psychophys. 73 971–995.10.3758/s13414-010-0073-7 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

56. Tammet D. (2006). Born on a Blue Day. London: Hodder & Stoughton.57. Thioux M., Stark D. E., Klaiman C., Schultz R. T. (2006). The day of the week when

you were born in 700 ms: calendar computation in an autistic savant. J. Exp.Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 32 1155–1168.10.1037/0096-1523.32.5.1155[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

58. Uddin L. Q., Supekar K., Lynch C. J., Khouzam A., Phillips J., Feinstein C., et al.(2013). Salience network–based classification and prediction of symptom severity inchildren with autism. JAMA Psychiatry 70 869–879.10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.104 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

59. Vangenot S. (2000). L’oreille absolue: une oreille plus fine? Mus. Sci. 4 3–30.60. Wallace G., Happé F., Giedd J. (2009). A case study of a multiply talented savant

with an autism spectrum disorder: neuropsychological functioning and brainmorphometry. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364 1425–1432.10.1098/rstb.2008.0330 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

61. Ward J. (2013). Synesthesia. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 64 49–75.10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143840 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

62. Witthoft N., Winawer J. (2006). Synesthetic colors determined by having coloredrefrigerator magnets in childhood. Cortex 42 175–183.10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70342-3 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

63. Witthoft N., Winawer J. (2013). Learning, memory, and synesthesia. Psychol. Sci.24 258–265.10.1177/0956797612452573 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!

NLM NIH DHHS

64. Young R. L., Nettelbeck T. (1995). The abilities of a musical savant and his family.J. Autism Dev. Disord. 25 231–248.10.1007/BF02179286 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

Articles from Frontiers in Psychology are provided here courtesy of Frontiers Media SA

Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy | Browsers | Accessibility | ContactNational Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda MD, 20894 USA

You are here: NCBI > Literature > PubMed Central (PMC) Write to the Help Desk

Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!